Help Sought for Kindergartner Attacked by Dog

Image 1 of 3Missty Gamblin, 5 (above) with a ladybug painted on her cheek and (next photo) in the hospital after a dog bite that required plastic surgery on her cheek and eye. The dog is quarantined.

Image 2 of 3Missty Gamblin, 5 (previous photo) with a ladybug painted on her cheek and (above) in the hospital after a dog bite that required plastic surgery on her cheek and eye. The dog is quarantined.

Missty Gamblin, 5 is a kindergartner at Frazier Park School who loves her dogs. “She dresses them up in clothes and puts sunglasses on them,” her mother says. Now, just home from the hospital, Missty’s mom, Christina Skiles, is reminding her that other people’s dogs are always to be treated with caution, even when you think you know them well.

Last week Missty was playing at her neighbors’ house, inside their fence, when she approached the family’s German shephard-Great Dane mix to give it a hug. Suddenly the big dog bit her face so badly that the little girl was rushed in an ambulance to Henry Mayo and then to USC Medical Center in Los Angeles for plastic surgery on her eye and cheek. She was in the hospital for a week, her mother sleeping in a chair at her bedside. At first they thought Missty might lose her right eye. Plastic surgery on her eyelid and cheek was necessary, with stitches to her lip and chin.

Missty’s mom works at the Denny’s at Grapevine as a waitress. As a single mother with a six-year-old son as well, the family does not have health insurance.

Denny’s co-workers Elena Abreu of Lockwood Valley and manager Cynthia Plaza have started a donations fund. Skiles’ sister Jennifer Parker (who works at the Boys & Girls Club) said medical expenses ran about $5,000 per day, estimated at about $35,000. Parker has placed collection jars around Frazier Park and posted flyers telling about the fund. Donations can be taken to the Mountain Communities Family Resource Center (above the library at 3015 Mt. Pinos Way, Ste. 201 in Frazier Park, 8:30 a.m. to noon and 1-4 p.m.) or checks can be made to the MCFRC, P.O. Box 1902, Frazier Park, CA, 93225, with the note “Missty Gamblin Medical Fund.”

This is part of the April 23, 2010 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.